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We now know that newly minted Education Minister Gordon Dirks will stand as a candidate in Calgary-Elbow, and we now also know that voters there will decide on Oct. 27 whom they shall send to represent them in the legislature.

Wes Coxe has two small footprints tattooed on the inside of his forearm. They are the only reminder of his unborn daughter after her ashes were stolen from his truck. Coxe and his wife Holly Keenan were advised by doctors to end their second pregnancy in December last year after it was learned the baby had major developmental issues, putting Keenan’s health at risk. After the abortion they kept the child’s cremated remains in a small green felt pouch at their Marda Loop home.

A recent pair of “poor outcomes” involving uncertified birthing attendants in the Calgary area has the province’s professional body for midwives worried public confidence in deliveries without a doctor may be shaken. Diane Rach, president of the College of Alberta Midwives, says the province’s health authority became aware of the home births that went awry after the expectant mothers or their babies had to be rushed to emergency wards at city hospitals.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — MTV and social issues go together like CBC and mud wrestling. So when MTV programming executives unveiled the new documentary series Virgin Territory, about the psychological and societal pressure facing 15 young adults as they struggled over whether to remain a virgin in their young-adult years, the discomfort in the room was palpable. The channel formerly known as Music TV is better known for programs like Jersey Shore and Catfish: The TV Show, after all.

Alberta’s health minister says he has little faith the federal government will reverse two-year-old cuts to refugee health funding, so the province is now looking at ways it can fill the gaps in patient care. “The issue is that these people need access to these services, whether they’re refugees or permanent residents. The question on the table is, who is going to pay for those services,” said Fred Horne.

Tossing three newborns in the trash has landed a Calgary woman another 18 months in jail and three years probation. Meredith Katharine Borowiec, 32, abandoned babies in 2008 and 2009. Their bodies were never found.

Meredith Katharine Borowiec faces a maximum five-year prison sentence for disposing of two live newborn babies in a trash bin, a judge ruled Tuesday. In his lengthy oral decision, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Pewter McIntyre acquitted the 32-year-old Calgary woman of two counts of second-degree murder and convicted her of the rare criminal charge of infanticide regarding the deliveries in 2008 and 2009.

The timeline of when Meredith Borowiec was taking and not taking birth control fits in precisely with alleged pregnancies and giving birth to two newborns, which she quickly dumped into the trash in 2008 and 2009, Crown prosecutor Jayme Williams said on Friday.

Accused baby killer Meredith Katharine Borowiec was not suffering from any acute mental disorder when she allegedly discarded newborn babies into the trash on three occasions - in 2008, 2009 and 2010 - a forensic psychiatrist testified on Wednesday. Instead, Dr. Kenneth Hashman concluded from a 60-day assessment on Borowiec last year that she did not want to be like her mentally ill mother, feared losing her partner Ian Turnbull who did not want children, was not ready to be a mother and had difficulty coping with the situation.

Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Charissa Destiny Calverley had her midwife pack up the placenta into a bio-hazard bag provided by the hospital, and put the package on ice. Calverley then called Susan Stewart of Pure Birth Services and asked her to come and get the afterbirth. Stewart took the organ to her Calgary home where she steamed it, dehydrated it, ground it up and then encapsulated it so her client would be able to swallow placenta pills daily over the first the several months of new motherhood.

The stage was set. A wall of pink and blue balloons served as backdrop as guests had their pictures taken with props. Next to Oreos dipped in pink and blue icing, a chalkboard was set up so votes could be registered. The big moment arrived, and a roar echoed through the room after guests bit into their white chocolate covered cake pops and saw ... pink. This bash hosted by Katie Evans for her extended family wasn’t a baby shower per se. It was the latest pre-parenting trend that’s gaining momentum across North America — a gender-reveal party. That’s right; a party in which the sex of the unborn baby is revealed to all.

Miriam the surrogate is wearing four estrogen patches across her lower abdomen and a Santa Muerte religious idol on a delicate chain around her neck. Before she moved to the resort town of Cancun to live in a small house teeming with eight other Mexican women preparing to carry babies for international couples, Galicia was a police officer in Toluca. She and her fellow officers believed Santa Muerte - the Saint of Death - would protect them.

The Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench has thrown out a Banff doctor’s request for a judicial review of the closure of the maternity ward at Mineral Springs Hospital. Dr. Ian MacDonald claimed that Alberta Health Services and Covenant Health had made the controversial decision without “necessary, appropriate and meaningful consultation.”

A mother whose cancer diagnosis prevents her from providing enough breast milk for her adorable five-month-old daughter is getting a little help from a lot of friends. Aimee Taylor works in health care, and like many in the know she feels a newborn should have an initial year's worth of breast milk.

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